TRC-90 vs HIE-90

Since I have been super busy the past few weekends with birthdays and Weddings, I haven't actually gotten to play with any of the new goodies.  Thats lead to just a lot of thinking about some of the different upgrades, and inspired by a forum post I wanted to dig a bit into the TRC-90 vs HIE-90 numbers and some of their uses.

The TRC-90 has been a staple of Rebel lists since the upgrades introduction, and it was heavily favored with Ackbar lists to just dump out a ridiculously good amount of damage for just 51 points.  The errata that brought it to a single use didn't affect Ackbar fleets as much, but fleets that were used to putting in a minimum of 2 damage on two attacks with a double arc lost some oomph.  We need to do a little extra math to get how much damage we can pump out in a best case scenario.  Currently, out of the front at long range, you can expect to do 2.8 damage with TRC being activated, with 2 damage being the max from the side arc at long.  At medium range the front arc bumps up to 3.5 damage, and the side sits at 2.5.  Adding it all up, you end up at at about 4.8 damage from double arcs if you proc on the front arc shot and get a little something from the side arcs then at medium.  You also ping out for about 3.2 damage at long range. 

The Heavy ion Emplacements on the CR90 comes in at 3 points cheaper, but you lose all long range shots since you cant get Disposable Capacitors on board.  There is a 58% chance to trigger HIE from the front arc of a CR90B, and a little better than 43% from the side.  The damage output though at medium range makes up for it, pushing a total of 5.5 damage out of a double arc shot when using HIE from either the front or side arc.  The damage output though is a little misleading, since thats including the shields you've stripped from the side arcs.  The number moves down a little bit to 4.3 on just the targeted arc from a dual arc shot.

Configuration	Long Range Damage	Medium Range Damage	Best Damage to single Arc	Damage per Cost LR	Cost Per Damage Medium
TRC	3.2	4.8	4.8	15.9	10.6
HIE	0.0	5.5	4.3	NA	8.7

We should also consider though the drop off due to defensive tokens.  Wheres a TRC shot will get halved by a brace, you'll still be doing a minimum of 2 damage to the targeted hull zone and 4 damage overall with the HIE.  The HIE tends to also do pretty well against re-directs thanks to already pushing that 1 damage over, and again doing a minimum 1 to the targeted hull zone.  Both weapons do suffer greatly at the hands of evades though, since TRCs get cancelled at long range and re-rolled at medium, as will HIE crits.  The front arc of a CR90B has only about a 15.6% chance to roll more than 1 crit, so you're likely going to lose that crit on the re-roll. 

Overall I think the HIE90 will see a lot of time as a support ship in fleets that feature a bigger threat to go with it.  It softens up targets and is sufficiently hard to kill for just 48 points that plinking it and ignoring that decked out Admonition is going to leave you feeling very bad.  Its going to take planning though, and I think a little more dedication than a TRC90 does, since it just fits into every list so easily.  Both will have their place, but I'm going to be really pushing to try some HIE90s.